Shelagh Stephenson Radio Plays

Shelagh Stephenson was born in Northumberland and read
drama at Manchester University. She has written
several original plays for BBC Radio. These include
Darling Peidi, about the Thompson and Bywater murder
case, which was broadcast in the Monday Play series
in 1993; a Saturday Night Theatre, The Anatomical
Venus, broadcast in the following year; and Five
Kinds of Silence (1996), which won the Writer's
Guild Award for Best Original Drama. Her first stage
play, The Memory of Water, opened at the Hampstead
Theatre, London, in July 1996, and her second, An
Experiment With An Air Pump, joint winner of the
1997 Peggy Ramsay Award, opened at the Royal Exchange
Theatre, Manchester, in February 1998. Also Life is a
Dream, and Through a Glass Darkly in 2004.

DARLING PEIDI....1993
- The story of Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters.

On 9th January 1923, Edith Thompson and Frederick
Bywaters were hanged in London, she at Holloway, and he at Pentonville.
They were both found guilty of her husband's murder in a quiet street
in Ilford one late night in October 1922. Edith was 29 when she died,
her lover only 20. The Crown "proved" at the trial at the Old Bailey
that although it was Bywaters who stabbed the 32 year old Percy
Thompson to death, Edith had set it up. She must have masterminded
it because she was a successful businesswoman in London, whereas the
much younger Bywaters was a mere merchant sailor.

But there was no solid evidence to connect Edith
Thompson to the crime. Instead, there was a rash and fanciful wish,
repeatedly expressed in her many letters to Bywaters, to be rid of
her husband. From such references the Crown inferred poison, but the
two most distinguished pathologists in the country independently
concluded that there had been no attempt at poisoning.

Petitions for clemency were signed by almost a
million people, who were convinced of her innocence. However, Edith
and Frederick's appeal was turned down. The appeal judges called the
murder 'a squalid and rather indecent case of lust and adultery',
and seemed to think that it was only a small step from adultery to
murder. There are many people alive today who regard Edith's
sentence as a tragic and disgraceful mistake, and there is a group
working now, eighty years later, towards achieving a posthumous
pardon. This speaks for itself.

I am not very knowledgeable about the case, and am
grateful to the novelist Molly Cutpurse for her assistance in improving
the accuracy of this page. She goes on to say that for a
complete and authorised account of these terrible events, only one
recommendation is necessary: CRIMINAL JUSTICE by Professor Rene Weis -
the superlative authority. It's published by Penguin.

Society has changed a lot since the Thompson-Bywaters
case. In the twenties, and later, single women finding themselves pregnant might
find themselves locked in an asylum. Tell teenagers about this and they
think you're joking ... but it was not amusing to the families of those
involved. There have been TV programmes about some of these unfortunate
women recently.

On a related matter, you may
like to know that Molly Cutpurse writes
extensively about recent history, and her first book to be
published (The Last Winter) was a psychological fantasy about how a
young and modern, badly-educated single mother coped with suddenly
being dropped into March 1939 with no means of returning.
Her recent work includes a very unusual novel about Edith Thompson's life.
. Details can be found on
http://www.mollycutpurse.com/

Molly Cutpurse's view of the play

I was intrigued to discover how this was going to be treated. Well, although I found the production rather sparse in terms of auditory clues for scene changes, I was moved to tears by the conclusion which I was dreading, by which I mean... how far were we going to be allowed to follow Edith to her doom? At least the producers didn't spare us from the horror, which is the point, although the intense and profound fear she experienced did not come across as strongly as I thought it could and should have been portrayed. However, a quality listening experience and the author had obviously done her homework.

Today, some eighty years after the event, the tragedy drags on; it feels like a wound in the side of British justice. It was a seminally shocking event which could so easily have been prevented if those with the power had shown some mercy.

The hangman later committed suicide. Almost everyone involved left their positions. Both the governor and the priest spent their remaining years protesting with great vigour against the death penalty. Edith was most probably pregnant at the time of her death; she had put on a stone in weight despite hardly eating while she languished in Holloway prison for three months. And when the death penalty problem came up again in the Sixties, Edith's name was mentioned once again in parliament such was the infamy of her passing.

Finally, when Edith's body was re-interred in Brookwood cemetery 46 years later, the authorities didn't even have the heart to inform her sister who had been prevented from placing any flowers on the grave. She died in the Seventies never knowing her sister had been moved.

Many thanks to Molly for this contribution - N.D.

Bonjour Tristesse....2002
Francoise Sagan - dramatised by Shelagh Stephenson.
Francoise Sagan’s 1950s classic tells the chilling story of seventeen-year old Cecile. Her plans for a long, languid summer are ruined when a new woman enters her father’s life. But Cecile will stop at nothing to get her own way.

LIFE IS A DREAM....2004
- BBC Afternoon Play 11 May 04 .....Sam Lazarus is a billionaire with a conscience. When he happened to invent a special style of drinks carton 10 years earlier he had no idea he would end up rich as Croesus with two monstrous children and Patricia - an anorexic, botox junkie wife, who won't sleep with him.
So, when one day he wakens to find himself in parallel reality, in which he is married to his childhood sweetheart and Hilary Clinton is President, he thinks he has died and gone to heaven.
But can he prevent himself regressing to his former life and misery? Or has he at last found a way through the membrane?

..... Sam awakes to find
himself in a parallel reality where he is married to his childhood
sweetheart. Rather different to the place he thought he was living
in...this was an excellent imaginative drama, similar in style and
quality to "Find Me", which went out about six months ago.
Dir. Eoin O'Callahagn. ....-N.D.

Martha Jardine obsesses over
the diaries of renaissance man John Collingwood, but in the 18th century,
Collingwood's family are discovering his secret.

Shelagh Stephenson’s play for BBC Radio 3 is set both in 18th century Lincolnshire
and 21st century London. In 1780, Sir John Collingwood is an eminent artist,
engraver and landowner, recently returned from the Indies and America.
In 2004, Martha Jardine has become an obsessive collector of Collingwood’s work.
But why do his diaries reveal so little?

The cast includes John Wood as Sir John Collingwood, Emma Fielding as Martha and Dermot Crowley
as Michael. Directed by Eoin O'Callaghan.

NEMESIS....2005
11 Nov 05. A play about the development of the atomic bomb, as seen afterwards by Oppenheimer and the wife of one of the people he worked with. Cast: Amanda Donahoe, Colin Stinton, Julian Wadham, Andrew Sachs, Paul Freeman, Nathan Osgood. Produced in Belfast by Eoin O'Callaghan.

(Notes sent by Hans Olsson, Sweden...........many thanks...-ND)

THE PEOPLE'S PRINCESS....2010
Interesting historical play about the Prince of Wales and the future queen, his wife Caroline of Brunswick. Directed by Eoin O'Callaghan. I think this went out originally in 2008.